For every man with a migraine, three women are struck by the severe headaches that often come with nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, and aura. That means a staggering 18 to 25 percent of women suffer from migraines, making it one of the most common disabling conditions faced by women around the globe.
This 3-to-1 ratio raises the obvious question: Why" The reason, suggest researchers at UCLA, is that women may have a faster trigger than men for activating the waves of brain activity thought to underlie migraines. If the theory is correct, this triggering mechanism may be a new target for migraine treatment.
Reporting in the Annals of Neurology, currently online, Dr. Andrew Charles, director of the Headache Research and Treatment Program in the UCLA Department of Neurology; Dr. Kevin C. Brennan, a clinical and research fellow in Charles lab; and colleagues used a mouse model to discover a big difference between males and females with regard to a phenomenon called cortical spreading depression (CSD), which is thought to be a chief culprit in causing migraines. In a separate study, to be published in the September issue of the Journal of Headache and Pain, the researchers report preliminary success in preventing migraines using memantine, a drug that blocks CSD waves.
Migraines were once thought to be caused primarily by constriction and dilation of blood vessels, Charles said. Now, thanks to various neuroimaging techniques, it has been shown that migraines may begin as a problem of brain excitability. Patients with migraines show cortical spreading depression, which is characterized by dramatic waves of activity that spread across the surface of the brain. CSD may in turn trigger not only the pain of migraine but the visual symptoms, nausea, dizziness and difficulty concentrating so common in migraine patients.
Brennan, working in Charles lab, used imaging techniques to visualize the initiation and spread of CSD in ane
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Contact: Mark Wheeler
mwheeler@mednet.ucla.edu
310-794-2265
University of California - Los Angeles
3-Aug-2007